


All In Again, And For The Rest Of Our Lives

by DreamsOfSleep



Category: New Girl
Genre: Alternate Ending, F/M, Fix-It, Happy Ending, I love you sex, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 05:16:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7209311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsOfSleep/pseuds/DreamsOfSleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate ending to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/7124257/chapters/16182037">Want Me, Want Me Not</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Perception

**Author's Note:**

  * For [newgirlystuff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/newgirlystuff/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Want Me, Want Me Not](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7124257) by [DreamsOfSleep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsOfSleep/pseuds/DreamsOfSleep). 



> You requested a happy ending to my S5 fix-it fic so here it is. :) 
> 
> It was supposed to be a oneshot but ended up being a threeshot. Enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick notices the look on Jess's face at the wedding and makes her talk to him about what's bothering her.

Everyone is on the roof where they have an impromptu reception set up for Schmidt and Cece. White Christmas lights are strung up, which give the roof a magical glow. Tables with white linen tablecloths surround a makeshift dance floor. On the far side of the roof, Schmidt and Cece’s favorite take out foods are served in trays buffet style and there is an open bar. There are tea candles and roses everywhere which gives the atmosphere an air of romance. A playlist of Schmidt and Cece’s favorite songs streams out from the stereo in one corner. Everyone is dancing and happy. 

After Nick and Reagan dance for a while, she goes to sit at one of the lawn chairs to take a breather and rest her feet. Nick notices that Jess is missing and excuses himself from Reagan to go down into the loft to find her. 

\---

Nick finds Jess in her room and they have their first moment alone together since the wedding festivities in the loft began. He has to thank her for convincing Reagan to try for him. He is still in disbelief over it and blurts it out to Jess because they are always honest with each other. 

“I’m freaking out, Jess. I can’t believe it. I mean, why does she want to be with me? It doesn’t make any sense. You of all people know that I’m just the weird detour you take before you find the guy you want to be with. I basically just help women realize that they could do a lot better…”

For some reason that seems to really upset Jess. She yells at him, “Stop it, Nick! I'm tired of you being the only person who doesn't see how incredible you are.” 

The look on her face confuses him. It made him think about the speech she gave to him in the middle of the desert way back when, when he was moving in with Caroline. He goes to shut and lock her bedroom door so they can talk in private without the wedding party coming in to interrupt them. Jess watches him go over to the door of her room and then come back to her. He takes both his hands and places them on her shoulders, looking intently into her eyes.

“Jess…spill, what’s going on?”

“Nothing…” she says sullenly, looking away from him.

“I know you’re not telling me something…” he pushes insistently.

“It’s not important.”

“Don't do that, Jess....I know that look; I know it’s something important to you. If it’s important to you, it’s important to me.” She stares silently back at him stony-faced, shutting him out. He switches tactics.

“We’ve been doing really good this past year, right? We talk to each other again, just like we used to.” He pauses. “Please, Jess? Can you just tell me?” he pleads. 

“I can’t, because you’re going off with Reagan for 3 months.” 

_Ah, progress. She probably doesn’t want to be all alone in the loft this summer since she just broke up with Sam. Schmidt and Cece will be gone on their honeymoon, Winston is spending all his time with Aly, and I’ll be gone with Reagan. Breakups suck and it sucks even more spending them alone. She needs a friend right now and she doesn't know how to ask me to be her friend again since our relationship has been all weird since she started dating Sam._

“You know I only agreed to go with her to give us space to figure things out, right? I know being friends with benefits made everything confusing again, but I won’t go if you don’t want me to go.”

Her eyes start filling up. “I want you to be happy, Nick.”

He cups her cheek with one of his hands. “You make me happy, Jess…Being here with you makes me happy. Last summer being friends with benefits with you was really fun, but I like just hanging out with you even if we don’t get to do all that other stuff. You want to just hang out this summer? I’ll tell Reagan I can’t go with her and we could go somewhere together instead, just as friends. We never did take that roadtrip together that we always talked about before we started dating.” 

She starts crying harder and it freaks him out. “Did I say something wrong, Jess?”

“I don’t want to be friends, Nick.”

His heart drops and he lets go of her shoulders. He knew being friends with benefits would be a mistake. He looks down at his feet away from her. “I’m sorry, Jess. I ruined everything.”

She touches his arm to get him to look back at her again and shakes her head to correct herself. “I mean…I don’t just want to be friends. I still have feelings for you, Nick. I’m still in love with you.”

He can only stare at her. This must be some kind of crazy dream because he didn’t just hear those words come out of her mouth. He’s had this dream a lot but he always wakes up right after she says it. This feels pretty real to him though; her eyes never look quite right in his dreams. 

He furrows his brow at her. “I’m going to need you to say that again, Jess.”

“I’m still in love with you, Nick,” she repeats. “I’m sorry if I’m messing everything up for you and Reagan, but I still love you.” Rivers of tears flow down her face. Her eyes are that intense shade of blue that she saves just for him. _I-love-you blue._

His heart starts beating erratically. He has a lump in his throat and the burn of tears behind his eyes that feels like he’s going to cry too.

“You didn’t mess things up for me Jess, because I never stopped loving you,” he chokes out. And now he really is crying. 

He pulls her close, hugging her tightly to him. He buries his face in her neck. Then he’s cupping her face and he’s kissing her like they haven’t seen each other in years. Kissing the love of his life. And he’s just absurdly, ridiculously happy, happier than he's ever been in his entire life, because he’s loved her for so long and now he knows she loves him back. 

But then he remembers Reagan and how he told her that they were going to try a real relationship and he wants this to be real with Jess instead so he pulls back from her, panting breathlessly. 

”Just wait…wait here, okay?” he says to her. 

He goes to find Reagan. 


	2. Reagan, Exit Stage Left

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick tells Reagan that he chooses Jess.

Reagan is still sitting by herself on a lawn chair when Nick goes back up to the roof. She is sipping a beer and watching the other couples out on the dancefloor.

Nick taps her on the shoulder and pulls up a lawn chair to sit opposite her so they are facing each other. “I need to talk to you Reagan. I can’t go with you to New Orleans.”

She doesn’t seem phased at all. “I figured. You weren’t exactly Mr. Commitment when I lived here. Some days you couldn’t even 'commit' to wearing pants to leave the loft. What made you change your mind?”

“I thought I needed to find something by getting away from here, from this apartment, from my life, but it was here all along. I’m sorry if I led you on and gave you the wrong idea, if I hurt you.” 

She gives him a look. “We weren’t that serious. It was just something different I was trying out too, letting people in.” 

He gives her a half-smile. “We were never right for each other, were we?” 

She smiles back at him. “Nah, but I’m glad you got to work things out with Jess.” 

He looks at her in confusion. “How did you know? We just made up literally 5 minutes ago.” 

She gives him one of her astute cat-like looks, blinking slowly. “It was obvious. I saw the way you looked at her when she came back from jury duty. You never looked at me or anybody else like that. But it took her a while to catch up, for her brain to catch up to her heart. I saw how she looked at you when we were dancing at the wedding though…like she was watching the love of her life leave her, watching me take you away from her. I would have said something, but you two needed to figure it out on your own. If you didn’t figure it out tonight, you would have gone with me and you would have hated it and you would have come back to her anyway.” 

He reaches over and squeezes her hand. “You’re a really cool person, you know that, Reagan? You should come back to visit us more often, stay in our lives.” 

She smiles. “I’d like that.” She looks at her watch. “I really should be going now. Early flight to catch and all that.” 

She stands up and he walks her back down from the roof to the elevators. They hug in front of the elevator doors. 

“Hang on to her, Nick.” 

“Don't worry; I’m not letting her go again.” 

She gets into the elevator and they look at each other's faces as the doors shut, closing that chapter of their lives. 


	3. Love Is The Answer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick and Jess begin again.

Nick goes back to Jess’s room and closes the door behind him. She’s still waiting for him standing in the same position he left her in, as if trying to preserve the moment in case he changed his mind.

“Sorry that took a while,” he says to her apologetically. 

She looks away from him. “What did you say to Reagan?” 

“I told her I couldn’t go with her. She actually said she already knew.” He reaches over to place his hand under her chin and tilt her head up so she will look directly at him. “You know it was always you, right, Jess? It was never a contest between picking you and picking Reagan or anyone else. I just thought that if I couldn’t have you, I should make the effort to move on because you would have wanted me to. Not to keep trying to force you to love me or to keep hurting myself by keeping everything I felt for you all bottled up. To not stop myself from living because I was hanging on to you. But you’re it for me.” 

Her eyes shine with unshed tears, full of emotion, full of love for him. She takes him by the hand and leads him to her bed. “Show me you love me, Nick,” she says to him. 

He cups her face and kisses her deeply. His hands travel up her sides to cup her breasts, skimming the lace of her red dress. He presses a kiss to her neck and leans in close to her ear. He whispers to her, "I didn’t get a chance to tell you, but I love this dress on you. It reminds me of that red sundress you wore the day we met, the day I fell in love with you." He gazes into her eyes, lost in the memory. "Red is definitely your color." His words make her blush all over. 

He takes his time, pressing gentle kisses down her body. Her fingers tangle in his hair as he presses a kiss over her heart and they share a quiet moment where she just holds his head against her, feeling his love for her radiating out from that pinpoint of connection and through the rest of her body. 

He reaches for the zipper on the back of her dress, and pulls it down. He pushes the fabric down her body and she lets the dress pool at her feet. She is standing there in her red lace bra and matching panties. He presses a kiss to her shoulder. He unhooks her bra and pushes the straps down her arms, revealing her naked breasts to him. He presses another kiss to her heart. His hands are on her hips and his fingers hook in her panties, pushing them down so she can step out of them. She is now completely bare before him. His hands remain on her hips as he stands back to drink her in. Memorizing her in this moment. _Her perfect alabaster skin, the pink flowers in her long raven hair, her perfect red lips. Her eyes stormy with desire for him. Knowing she wanted him. Knowing she loved him back._

Her hands reach out to undress him. She takes off his yarmulke and undoes his tie, placing them neatly on her desk. She helps him take his jacket off and throws it on the back of her desk chair. She untucks his dress shirt and unbuttons it, pushing it off his shoulders. When he is bare-chested before her, she places her hand over his heart. He places his hand over her own and presses it to his heart before kissing her again. “You were there the whole time, Jess,” he whispers to her and he feels her smile against his lips. She undoes his pants and undresses him so they are both completely bare before each other.

He pushes her back towards the bed so she is lying on her back and hovers over her. He presses kisses down her body, loving every inch of her. She arches up into him. “Please,” she gasps out. “I need to feel you, Nick.”

He kisses her deeply on the mouth before he pushes into her. Their fingers are interlaced. His eyes never leave hers, watching all the emotions passing through them. Being more present with her than he’s ever been and feeling everything so intensely, everything he has felt for her since the day he met her. That chafing in his heart for her is now a burning, and he feels it right down to the marrow of his bones, into his soul. Seeing everything he feels reflected back at him through her eyes.

They are both breathing hard and he can feel himself getting close. He reaches a hand in between them to push her over the edge with him. He feels her clench around him and then he’s releasing into her, burying his face into her neck.

The world blissfully whites out and life is reduced to a series of sensations: _the feel of her skin, the sound of her breath ghosting past his ear, the pulsing rhythm of her heartbeat, the warmth of her against him, that thrum of want for her that remains in his body, in his heart._ He stays on top of her for a few minutes, savoring the feel of her under him, trying to catch his breath and listening to her trying to catch hers. He rolls off of her and to the side. He puts his arm around her and pulls her close to his body, holding her against him, making sure they never stop touching skin to skin.

\---

They are lying in bed afterwards, curled around each other, all loved up. 

She turns to him and says, “I’m sorry I hurt you, Nick. You were in love with me the whole time and I kept picking all those other guys but they were all wrong for me because they weren’t you. I wish I had seen it then.” 

He turns to her and says, “We weren’t ready for each other then, Jess. It was us trying to be who we thought we should be in a relationship, what other people wanted us to be, instead of just loving each other. It became you against me and not us against the world. But we’re on the same side now. I just want you Jess…you and me for the rest of our lives." 

She kisses the palm of his hand. “That’s what I want too, Nick. We have to help each other not forget that, help each other remember that we love each other even though some days are hard and we make each other crazy and we fight a lot. We need to remember that we chose each other, that we love each other, and that we have each other’s backs no matter what.” 

He smiles at her, takes in a breath, and says, “All in?”

She looks at him and she knows now that it’s not about running away to some made up place to be other people in some mythical perfect relationship. It’s about holding each other’s hands and running into the rest of their real lives together… _running into the ocean together._

She clasps his hand in hers. “All in.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is a reference to the St. Vincent song ["All My Stars Aligned"](https://youtu.be/0mk9_Ndly2I). Nick and Jess are finally in sync enough to have a real relationship with each other, accepting each other's flaws and loving each other for who they truly are, leaving themselves open for love so they can accept love and love each other back.
> 
> _There are no signs_  
>  _There are no stars aligned_  
>  _No amulets not a charm_  
>  _To bring you back to my arms_  
>  _There's just this human heart_  
>  _That's built with this human flaw_  
>  _What was your question_  
>  _Love is the answer_
> 
> And yes I totally recycled this reference from the last chapter of my other fic ["Paradise Nick and Paradise Jess Take On New Orleans."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6844933/chapters/15646405) I just really like this song. :p


End file.
